Science Fiction, Feminism, and Digital Humanities All in One Place

Tag: article

I am excited to share that my Digital Humanities article on digital literacy has been published in the open-access journal Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ) in a special issue (11.3) on undergraduate education. The article is titled “A Long-Belated Welcome: Accepting Digital Humanities Methods into Non-DH Classrooms” and argues that there is a place for DH methods in all Humanities classrooms and that women especially can benefit from increased engagement and confidence with digital technology in the subjects in which they comprise the majority of students.

I look forward to reading all of the other articles in this issue and appreciate being able to share it widely because DHQ is open access! Thanks to all those who have supported me in the two-year journey from start to finish.

The above link shows you two options for accessing the article (yes, you can download the pre-print PDF version for free!).

The article looks at how names can evoke particular settings and cultures, how they helped Frank Herbert create his epic world of Dune on a scale similar to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings, and how they also serve to juxtapose West and East. Examples include Bene Gesserit (Jesuit), Atreides (Atreus, father of Agamemnon and Menelaus), Leto (mother of Artemis and Apollo), Sayyadina (female religious leader), and Shai-Hulud (immortal thing).

It is part of a special issue on names in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery, so you might be interested in other articles as well (one of my favorites, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, is represented, for example). I know that I pay more attention now to authors’ choice of names in their science fiction stories, and I hope you will too!

I’m looking forward to discussing altmetrics in a future post, so please share the official journal link with Frank Herbert Dune fans around the world and we can see where it travels.